Roadworks

Work continues apace on the new Dublin-Waterford motorway.
Down in the cutaway it must be freezing- the winter sun never seems to make it beyond the tip of the excavator's arm.


The UrbanSketchers blog had a challange for a sketch of "movement-speed".
My local Bugatti outlet was right out of Veyrons, so I sketched the dumptruck instead.

Clogherhead

Clogherhead harbour is a small fishing port about 70km north of Dublin and a couple of km outside Clogherhead village itself. I caught it on a still day, but like all exposed coastal harbours the winds can come through it like a juggernaut.
I love the way the house is cut into the hill to reduce the effects of the bitter eastern winds that howl through the place in winter.
The crabs were rejects. Damaged shells, claws and legs mean they won't be shipped to restaurants, but probably be used for bait by the numerous sea fishermen that cast off the harbour walls.

Trinity College

Here's a brushpen sketch of Trinity College, Dublin's first quadrant as you go through the main arch.

The Electric Picnic

I was asked to take part in a debate about comics and cartooning at this years Electric Picnic.

Hosting, was the fab BP Fallon and on the panel with me were cartoonist Tom Mathews and New York musician and comic artist Jeff Lewis. Paddy Cahill's superb short film about Tom was screened first and then the show got going. It was a bit of fun but we were competing with Orbital on the main stage so the posse weren't needed to escort us out of the tent when it was finished.

The following day, I brought along the kids to have a look around the site. Didn't catch too much music but we got a good flavour of the event in between riding on the carousel, searching for ice-cream and going on the ferris wheel

More Irish Pubs

Above are a few of the twenty five illustrations of Irish pubs I was commissioned to do for Guinness's 250th anniversary celebrations. They appear on beermats, presumably only available from the relevant pubs.
Having spent so many years doing storyboards which eventually end being used as coffee mats at various strategic meetings, it's endearing to have alcohol sloshed all over my illustrations for a change.

The pubs are from top : Morrisons of Belfast, Murphy's in Galway and Derry's Peadar O'Donnells

Waterbrush Sketches

Some sketches around Dublin And Galway done with a waterbrush loaded with diluted ink.
Left out the spire on O'Connell street - just didn't have enough paper! The others are Trinity college from Dame Street and Neactain's pub in Galway

Lunchtime sketching
If I'm not hooking up with someone or I'm not in the middle of yet another book about the Second World War, I generally bring along my sketchbook at lunchtime and try to quickly get down an impression of fellow diners and the surroundings, between nibbles. These are from Bollard's pub, Kafe Katz, Esquires and some other places the names of which were as forgettable as their food.

Kilkenny Centenary Stamp


I recently illustrated the new 55c stamp celebrating Kilkenny's 400th centenary of the granting of the city's charter.
The initial sketches explored a completely different direction, a more abstract and composite route, but eventually the Stamps Advisory committee prefered a more representative approach.


Two illustrations were completed for the final job; the illustration of Kilkenny castle for the stamp itself and a view of the tholsel or town hall for the first day cover.

Irish Pubs (in Ireland)
As an antidote to all those sketches of double-latte arrivistas in Starbucks, here's a couple from the inside of pubs - and not a laptop in sight!. All done in Galway city - Neachtain's and Tig Coili. Slainte!

Belfast Sketches

I was in Belfast on an illustration assignment recently and took the opportunity to do a little sketching.
Kelly's pub off Royal Avenue is the real deal. No music, one armed bandits or TV to disturb the ancient arts of conversation and reading. There's an unwritten law in Ireland that if a customer is reading the paper or a novel, they shouldn't be engaged in conversation further than the niceties of small talk .. "lovely weather today", "great result for the team at the weekend" etc. Other than that the printed word remains king and must be left undisturbed. For some reason most readers gravitate towards the counter rather than the tables.


While I was in town I took a trip on the ferris wheel outside City Hall. You get a great view over the city at the top, from Cave hill out to Belfast lough and the Harland and Woolf shipyards in the distance. The wheel stopped at the top for quite a while and gave me the opportunity to quickly sketch City Hall from a height.

Tell me if you've seen this one before.
Here's a little trick I discovered when my daughter was impatiently pestering me to make a custom sketchbook for her drawings of fairies, castles and the like. Despite years of working in the creative business, I'de always attempted to put together bound brochures and booklets by punching holes though the spine with a needle and the inserting the staples through and then pressing them closed. Not an easy thing to do unless you have fairy fingers. And the result was always that the staple bind would be loose or off register. Shazam! Pester power and Mother, Invention and Necessity not necessarily in that order. Works a treat every time.

Nightdrawing
I had to dash over to London recently and flew the redeye from Waterford Regional Airport to Luton with Aer Arann.
It's the way flying used to be. You park right outside the airport, wander into a concourse about the size of a convenience store, grab a coffee and board with the minimum of fuss. Total commute time from my door: 2 and a half hours to the taxi rank at Luton.
On the night-time return I did some quick sketches on the way.

Outside Luton terminal.

At the check-in. Mine had no queue thankfully. This was a little way up the departures floor.

Boarding in Luton. The plane is an Aer Arann Atr 72500 twin prop. It's got about 80 seats. Maybe it's because of the props, but its landing speed is scarily fast. Nice and comfortable though... and quiet. This was sketched in a bit of a rush and finished on the plane so I'm pretty sure the wheels and arches are all wrong.

Back in Waterford

I was in Madrid with some friends recently to play and watch some football. Hanging around with a bunch of na'er do wells intent on having a good time is not conducive to filling in a sketchbook and it wasn't until the fug of the weekend began to clear on the Monday morning that I got a chance to exit the bars and wander about the city and do some doodling.

We were staying just off the Grand Via and between match fixtures and post match celebrations, I got little chance to wander off the beaten track, which always supplies the most interesting subject matter for sketchbooks. Despite that, the centre of the city is pretty interesting architecturally and with just a brief few hours on Monday morning, I at least got a few sketches down.
The ones in the bars were quickly jotted down on whatever paper was available and worked up later. There are a couple that I haven't worked up and remain scraps on the back of an envelope with scribbles indicating colours and features. I might get around to doing something with them at some later date.

The Industrial Environment

Here's a bunch of sketches I did around some local Industrial estates.

They're a pretty unloved environment, understandably so, since it seems to me that care of property is very much aligned to exposure to the general public. If it's a tile distributor or mail depot, they're generally scrubbed up, new and gleaming, but if it's a steel fabricator or obscure machinery parts outlet catering only to specialists, then you're lucky if the crumbling fascia has been painted in the last 20 years.

Perversely, the latter are usually the more attractive, avoiding the bland warehouse architecture taking over the perimeter of our cities

Happy Halloween!

Have a great spooky night!

National Ploughing Championships
This year's National Ploughing Championships took place at Cuffesgrange, Co Kilkenny.
I grabbed my wellies and a sketchbook and headed out to try and capture some of the spectacle

Roadway Construction Sketches
The new Waterford-Dublin motorway continues apace. Here's a couple of sketches I did where the northern Kilkenny spur road is under construction.

Hook Head lighthouse on the Wexford Coast
Blindingly white on a summers day with all the whitewash around.
There are a bunch of cottages (second pic) just away from the lighthouse which now house a cafe/shop and admissions desk.
It's thought to be one of the oldest operational lighthouses in the world. It dates from the early 13th century and is a unique example of an almost intact medieval lighthouse though it doesn't look it a first sight.
The tower was constructed of local limestone and the original building survives almost intact at just under 37m high. It consists of two tiers linked by a mural stairway of 115 steps. The upper tier, originally supported the coal beacon, which in modern times was replaced by a lantern.

Never mind the Bollards.
Bollard's pub on the corner of Kieran Street, Kilkenny

Thursday Farmers Market, Kilkenny

Customs House, Dublin

O'Connell Street, Dublin
Acrylic sketch of O'Connell St

Hair piece

messing about with photoshop

Some inky bits n pieces

Ah Paris.
Went over to meet my friend Vincent a couple of years back and it was great to get a tour of out of the way places from a someone who knew the city intimately. He always seemed to know some local coffee shop around the corner from the main drag, so we never spent more than a euro on the stuff compared to 2.50 plus on the main streets.
The new Bibliotech is astonishing, with a veritable forest within the enclosed courtyard. Not on the usual sightseeing route, but well worth a detour to see. Didn't get to sketch it though.
The sketches are of the Trocedaro from the Eiffel tower side, rooftops in the Opera quarter, the canal St Martin- take a trip. The tunnel from Rue du Faubourg du Temple to the Place de la Bastille is like something from a Caro and Jeunet film. The canal featured in Hotel du Nord by Marcel Carné. The last drawings are from around the rue St Germain.

A page from my sketchbook done one balmy afternoon in Berlin
Had only a day and an half in the city, so I didn't get to see half of what I wanted too.
Good enough reason to go back soon.

Some watercolour sketches from hols in Kerry

Here are some rough sketches from a story called Littlebird and the Starfish

Treehouse chez Rodge. I'll post some of the construction sketches when I get photoshop working again.

Pen and ink portraits

Enniscorthy, Co Wexford
From a tattered sketchbook

Some paintings from a recent exhibition "Estuary"

Some sketches from a skiing trip to Valle D'Isere last year
With two infants in tow I didn't get much time to do any drawing.
These were done up the slopes in a tiny cheap writing pad while it started to snow heavily, hence the staining on the drawings.

HOW TO MAKE A LIGHTWEIGHT DRAWING BOARD
Here's a useful guide to making a lightweight drawing board to support large sketchbooks when you're out and about sketching.

You'll need a piece of Capa board (or foam core board as it's also known) at just over twice the size of your finished board.
Cut some strips from the long side of the board at half an inch (12,5mm) thick. Score them front and back as shown to make a zigzag shape. Tape them loosely into place.

Measure and make some compartments at the upper edge of the board (this will be useful for storing pencils, erasers, brushes etc when you're sketching). Dollop plenty of PVA/ Unibond/ woodglue on both edges of the half inch strips. Place the top board into position, put some books on top, sprinkle with oregano and seasalt and leave overnight. The following morning, Presto! You have a freshly baked lightweight drawing board.


Next. How to build a medium sized space station from aluminium foil and plumber's tape. Whoops, the Russians have beaten me to it!

More sketches from Kilkenny

The ebb and flow of human traffic, Liffey Street, Dublin

drawings from around Kilkenny and London

My contribution for the Illustrators Guild "The Body" Sketchbook.
Haven't a clue what it means.

Sketch of a house for a sci-fi comic

friday afternoon doodles

An old sketch of NY from a height. Can't remember where it was done from, but it was pre 9/11.

Motorbike couriers across from the Bank of Ireland HQ on Baggot Street.
They always congregate around the newsagents just right of shot though the owner has attempted to move them on with no success. Maybe email will do the job for him.

Smithfield flower and vegetable market early one winter morning. Jeez it was freezing.
Couldn't be bothered trying to get in any of the background detail, in fact I finished shading in most of the people in the muggy comfort of a nearby greasy spoon.

The Four Courts. Dunno how long the average kiss lasts. Luckily these were school kids. They tend to stick at it longer then most, though I'de still say it was 10 secs at most. Just enough to get down a rough sketch.

Sketching around the city. This one is around the back of Busarus looking towards the Financial Services area

Here's one that got away
It's important that that you're confident that your client can visualise how the finished piece will look.
In this case I kept sending pencil scribbles, presuming they understood that the finished article would be carried out in this style of brush and ink. They didn't. Numerous sketches later we settled on a layout neither of us were crazy about and dictated more by exhaustion than preference.
Another one notched up to experience

Here's a simple still life set-up I came across years ago from a book by Arthur Stern called " How to see colour and paint it" for doing still life experiments.(dunno if you can still get the book).
It's a three sided box made of plywood or better again foam core board.
Make it whatever size you wish but preferably a size where you can easily get various coloured papers to clip onto all three sides (including white where you need it).
What you get are great cast colours. Careful observation of for instance an orange or coloured bottle will reveal subtle changes in cast colours as you move around the colour backing and the light. The anglepoise gives you a consistant light source. Just move it around to suit. Use a second one if you want.

Here's a tone palette I use for Photoshop painting
Feel free to use it.
Anyone have anything better?

The old Cattle Market in Kilkenny closed down late last year and moved to a swanky new premises on the Dublin Road
I popped up for the last few auctions and sketched a few of the farmers hanging around to see if they'de made a fortune

Heads. Everyone must have heads on their blog.

These are some doodles I did during one of those " Why don't I do some generic images, scoot them off to a photostock library and make a fortune" moments. Me and twenty million others.

an old sketch of Prague Cathedral
Done with shoe polish and a screwdriver by the look of it.

messin' about with acrylics trying to work up some studies of light and shade

Disaffected youf just seem to get younger and younger

Logo for Kilkenny Culture Night

I have a dream ...

Here's an Illustration I did for the "Spoken Word" exhibition at this years Electric Picnic event in Stradbally.
The idea was to illustrate from a famous speech. I chose Martin Luther King's "I have a dream..."
Seems as relevant -and falling on as many deaf ears- today, as it was during the sixties.
Wish I'de photographed it before I varnished it.

A tree. Somewhere. In the west.

Here's one I started some time back of Birchall's pub in Ranelagh, just before Jack sold the place.
I have a habit of getting lazy about going out to lunch and for a time I always used to wander down to Birchalls and order the same thing - cheese salad sandwich and soup.
Then you find yourself getting particular about the way it's cut - straight across, not diagonal, thanks.
It's just a short step to complaining about bloody teenagers.
Birchalls was a nice place but since Jack and family moved out it seems to have gone downhill. At least it looked that way last time I was there.
The drawing was of a bunch of ne're do wells that gathered about noon and filled in the Irish Times crossword (the cryptic one of course).
They did it on their own seperate papers and would have animated arguments about the final few clues. Crossword was an apt description, because a more irritable bunch of grumps I have never come across. It usually ended with insults fired across the floor, a couple of carefully chosen put-downs and an unresolved puzzle. Of course they'de be there again at noon the next day.

kilkenny Town Hall

Centenary Stores in Wexford town

At the Gallery

Outside the Bailey pub on Dublin's Duke Street

more Varanassi

Varanassi, India
You could have slipped into the 12th century (the internet connection is that slow).

Near Lexington

TWAJFK

The leaning tower of Empire

Somewhere off rue St Michel

Paris. Aaahh, I remember it well.

Mount Juliet, Co Kilkenny

Some afternoon off Grafton Street
The two guys were were decked out in the usual dull Champion Sports leisurewear
I just decided to make their duds a bit more interesting.
Coming to a store near you this autumn.

Bullavalla Harbour, Co Kerry

White beach. Near Caherdaniel, Co Kerry
Paintings from holidays in Kerry
Oil and flies on Canvas

A tidy desk is a tidy mind

Them pesky flying lobsters

Basra

Bin Collection, Dublin

The late Lambert's Garage by the Grand Canal

Old East stand (now demolished), Landsdowne Road

Hook Head, Co Wexford

Basra

Back of an envelope sketch loosely based on Picasso's Absinthe Drinker